AbstractGiven, that blackouts are likely to occur, one might ask what are
being done to reduce their impact, i.e., their extent, intensity and
duration? Immediately after the initial event, the power system frequency
rise and decay are arrested automatically by load rejection, load
shedding, isolation scheme and controlled islanding. The success rate of
these automatic schemes has been over 50%! The challenge has been to
coordinate the control and protective systems between the generating
plants and the electrical system which have up to two orders of magnitude
response differences.

In the subsequent restoration
phase, plant operators in coordination with system operators attempt to
manually maintain a balance between load and generation by using the
available initial sources of power and supplying the critical loads by
priority. The duration of these manual procedures has invariably taken
much longer than the equipment limitations. In view of the industry's
breakup, the concern is that the power plants - power system manual
coordination may no longer receive the due attention, resulting in a
greater blackout impact.

It is concluded that research
and development efforts in the automatic coordination of power plants -
power system is more expedient and in near term more advantageous
resulting in a reduced blackout impact.